Extended metaphors, we know, tend to go on and on, until they collapse from
the accumulated weight of analogies that won't hold. Much as we might wish
it otherwise, the metaphor of the information highway has yet to reach its
limit. In fact, despite Bill's early protestations, everything about the
book, from the title to Annie Leibovitz's jacket photo to chapter headings
like "Paths to the Highway," argues the endurance of the trope. So why does
he want to shed it in favor of marketspace, or some such? Why does he urge
us, when we "hear the phrase 'information highway'" to "imagine a
marketplace or an exchange" instead of a road, to "think of the hustle and
bustle of the New York Stock Exchange or a farmers' market?"

Perhaps because, as he himself admits, the term "highway...suggests that
everyone is driving and following the same route" -- in other words, the
metaphor of the highway comes too close to suggesting (to anyone who has
spent an afternoon in rush-hour traffic) the creeping homogeneity the
digital revolution is really about. In a nation that never tires of paying
lip-service to individualism, metaphors that evoke mass movements are still
problematic. Why? Because even though we live in dread of being perceived
as somehow different or out of step with the herd, we also want to maintain
(as Bill's parade of Wild West, Oregon, trail, New Frontier analogies makes
clear), our illusion of independence. What's wrong with the highway? It
suggests--too clearly--the options before us: merge, or exit.

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